Mongolian Etymology.

May 1, 2025 by 43 Comments

I took it into my head to wonder about the history of the Mongolian word хот/hot ‘city,’ as seen in (e.g.) Hohhot “Blue City,” and I got increasingly grumpy as I searched unsuccessfully for resources on Mongolian etymology. I found a Wiktionary page, but it has no etymology section. This isn’t as glaring a gap as the lack of an Arabic etymological dictionary, but it’s annoying. Anyone know of anything? And even if there’s no general work, does anyone know the etymology of хот/hot/ᠬᠣᠲᠠ?

Comments

  1. David Eddyshaw says
    May 1, 2025 at 11:30 am

    One for Bathrobe …

    It’s qotan “fortress, city, town” in Classical Mongolian. Not that that helps a lot. I don’t know if there are any related words in Classical Mongolian to shed any further light on it.

    As Mongolic is an isolate (whatever the Altaicists say) …
    Actually, not quite … there are “para-Mongolic” remoter relatives. Anyone know Khitan?

  2. languagehat says
    May 1, 2025 at 11:45 am

    It’s qotan “fortress, city, town” in Classical Mongolian.

    Well, that’s a big help already — thanks!

  3. drasvi says
    May 1, 2025 at 12:22 pm

    Qotan has nothing to do with the (almost homophonous) name of [the kingdom of] Khotan, I think?

  4. languagehat says
    May 1, 2025 at 12:54 pm

    Apparently not.

  5. Y says
    May 1, 2025 at 4:06 pm

    Hans Nugteren’s 2011 dissertation reconstructs *kotan ‘enclosure; walled town’.

    For the state of the art in comparative Mongolic see Rykin’s article here, and his older essay on etymological dictionaries in particular here. Much of the work is not easily accessible in the West, and we’re fortunate for Nugteren’s dissertation supplement in that regard.

    (Kudos to Nugteren, who, according to the introduction, took 18 years to complete his dissertation, until he stopped trying to keep up with ever-increasing new data.)

  6. Y says
    May 1, 2025 at 4:41 pm

    (Misspelled Nutgeren, and the etymology is on p. 421.)

  7. Lameen says
    May 1, 2025 at 5:00 pm

    Huh. In Ainu, kotan means “village”. Wonder if it’s a coincidence or not?

  8. languagehat says
    May 1, 2025 at 5:01 pm

    Fixed Nugteren’s name — can’t let such a dedicated scholar be misspelled! And of course many thanks for all that information.

  9. languagehat says
    May 1, 2025 at 5:06 pm

    Here’s Nugteren’s entry:

    *kotan „enclosure; walled town‟. Not to be confused with Shirongol *ketü < *gertü „(at) home‟. Semantic developments comparable to that of *korïa [„courtyard; enclosure (usu. for keeping livestock in)‟].
      MMo SH qoton H68, pl qotot, qotat H68, HY qoton M90 „town‟, Muq qotan P302a „enclosure‟. WM qota(n) L972a, qoto(n) L972b. Kh xot (sic, not -on) H656a. Ord ġoto M308b. Bur xoto C592a „town‟, cf. xoto(n) C592b „enclosure‟. Brg xɔt U110 „town‟. Kalm xotn M601a „settlement, village‟. EYu [only S]. MgrH—. MgrM qudaŋ DS242b. BaoJ x(u)dúŋ L215. Kgj χutuŋ S286a. Dgx qudoŋ B73. Mog—.

  10. languagehat says
    May 1, 2025 at 5:15 pm

    From the introduction:

    The Mongolic languages spoken in Qīnghăi and Gānsù provinces in northern China have struck researchers by their aberrant developments, compared to the central Mongolic languages. Some unique features were recognised as being in part due to contacts with neighbouring languages, while others were clearly ancient features, reminiscent of Middle Mongol. In the past decades the Mongolic languges of Qīnghăi and Gānsù have become better known. Descriptions are available for all known Qīnghăi-Gānsù languages¹, as well as numerous publications on various diachronic matters. It is now possible to study these languages as a group from a comparative historical viewpoint.

    This book will explore the relationship between Common Mongolic, the reconstructed ancestral language of all Mongolic languages on the one hand, and the Qīnghăi-Gānsù languages on the other. It will investigate how the development of Mongolic lexemes in these peripheral Mongolic languages can contribute to the reconstruction of the earliest forms and later phonetic history of these lexemes themselves, as well as to our knowledge of Common Mongolic phonology as a whole.

    Footnote 1:

    The discovery of Kangjia demonstrates that finding new varieties of Mongolic is not out of the question. The term „Qīnghăi-Gānsù (QG) languages‟ will only be used here to refer to the peripheral Mongolic languages of these provinces. It thus excludes varieties of central Mongolic (Oirat and Mongol proper) also found here.

  11. drasvi says
    May 1, 2025 at 6:27 pm

    Kangjia

    Weirdly, not in en.WP (but there are brief articles in ru. and uz.WP: https://uz.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanzya)

  12. Y says
    May 1, 2025 at 7:15 pm

    Thanks, Hat!

    Another paper of his argues that Ewenki šamān, whence “shaman”, is reconstructible to Proto-Tungusic *samān, and is not a Wanderwort of Indic origin (as I had been given to believe.)

  13. David Marjanović says
    May 1, 2025 at 7:17 pm

    On the other hand, this qota(n) has been long also included in the whole ‘house, hut’ Wanderwort bundle (stretching from ocean to ocean: English hut to Ainu kotan), which includes also Uralic *kota.

  14. David Eddyshaw says
    May 1, 2025 at 7:48 pm

    Bah. The origin is evidently Waama kate “market.” Much better semantic match for “town.” Derived from kaate “gather together.”

    (Brought to you courtesy of my ongoing project to demonstrate that any given word has a lookalike from some Gur language, good enough for Ruhlen work.)

  15. AntC says
    May 1, 2025 at 9:16 pm

    Your Edo Nyland award must be due any moment now.

  16. Bathrobe says
    May 5, 2025 at 10:26 pm

    I looked at my etymological dictionary and came out none the wiser. It referred to the forms in different Mongolic languages. Nothing earlier.

    I looked the word up in a large dictionary and found eleven senses for the word хот. The first is ‘a large settlement’. Хот айл is a camp of cooperating households. The second is ‘a fold or flock of sheep’. As Hat’s long entry suggests, I’ve always felt that хот referred to a corral or enclosure, but I can’t find anything to back me up. The identity of the two words хот has always suggested to me some kind of common origin (similar to the way that the English word ‘town’ apparently relates to some kind of fence or enclosure) but I’ve never been able to back it up.

  17. drasvi says
    May 5, 2025 at 10:38 pm

    That’s – of course – cross-linguistically common: Russian gorod also referred to the wall itself*, Moroccan city of Agadir is from the Phoenician (and thence Berber) word for a wall.
    Etc. (I can’t name any examples which are far from Russia, but the steppe peoples are not “far” from it).

    * say, Китай-город**. Whether it referred to one of Moscow walls or to the part of the city protected by it (outside of the inner fortifications) – I’m not sure honestly, it did not refer to the whole city of Moscow.
    Or гуляй-город, a movable fortification.

    ** the etymology of Китай here, a word identical to our name of China (almost same as Eng. Cathay) is famously unknown:))))

  18. Hans says
    May 6, 2025 at 2:37 am

    The second is ‘a fold or flock of sheep’. As Hat’s long entry suggests, I’ve always felt that хот referred to a corral or enclosure, but I can’t find anything to back me up.
    Isn’t that what a “fold” is? It looks like the Khalkha word just became specialized for a corral with sheep in it. Or have I misunderstood what you wanted to say?

  19. Bathrobe says
    May 6, 2025 at 5:02 am

    Sorry, you’re right. I was misled by the wording “flock or fold”. “Sheepfold” is not part of my normal vocabulary.

  20. David Eddyshaw says
    May 6, 2025 at 5:44 am

    That’s – of course – cross-linguistically common

    The Kusaasi village Garu gets its name from Hausa gā̀rū “wall around a town or compound.”

  21. Bathrobe says
    May 6, 2025 at 7:07 am

    Also Chinese 城市 (chéngshì), where the first morpheme refers to a wall.

  22. drasvi says
    May 6, 2025 at 12:36 pm

    To the above: the etymological link between gorod “city” and “wall” is known to many here (and Russian verbs with this root have to do with walls rather than cities – except literary Russian gorodit’ “to construct something large and complicated”, often metaphorically).

    Катай-город is an example of where the semantics is somewhere between our “wall” and our “city” and overlaps with them.

    (When you say “a house” you too mean both (a) its walls (b) the space inside. And depending on context you sometimes refer to only one of (a) and (b). E.g. when we’re building a house, we are, literally, building its walls, with the goal of converting the space from the state “outside” into “inside, at home”, by encircling it, but not by literally building it)

  23. Keith Ivey says
    May 6, 2025 at 2:10 pm

    I don’t think I ever encounter that “fold” except in the expression “return to the fold”.

  24. Stu Clayton says
    May 6, 2025 at 2:21 pm

    The folded flock.

    #
    The flock was managed according to the principles of forward ‘creep’ grazing. This achieved by the use of enclosed areas, secured by hurdles, known as ‘folds’. The flock was ‘folded’ across fields of root crops (brassicas) in the winter and Vetches and Sainfoin in the summer.

    In a thick crop, the fold would be made of 25 by 25 hurdles, allowing 4 sheep per hurdle, thus 200 sheep in the fold. A thinner crop would have a fold of 30 by 30 hurdles. Hurdles were secured by a ‘shore’; a hazel post driven and then hit into a hole made by a shepherd’s bar and then secured by a coil of hazel known as a ‘shackle’.
    #

    Assembling, disassembling, moving and reassembling those hurdles must be one hell of a hard job.

    I don’t get the math, though: “In a thick crop, the fold would be made of 25 by 25 hurdles, allowing 4 sheep per hurdle, thus 200 sheep in the fold.” What is the meaning of “25 by 25 hurdles” ?? Some of the folds must have shared a hurdle. I can’t picture this.

  25. Jerry Friedman says
    May 6, 2025 at 2:54 pm

    I don’t get the math, though: “In a thick crop, the fold would be made of 25 by 25 hurdles, allowing 4 sheep per hurdle, thus 200 sheep in the fold.” What is the meaning of “25 by 25 hurdles” ??

    Strange, but I think they counted by the perimeter. If each side of a square is a fence consisting of 25 hurdles, the perimeter is 100 hurdles.

    Now why that’s a sensible way of allotting land to sheep I don’t know. I’d think they’d go by area, not perimeter. Maybe “4 sheep per hurdle” was only used for square pastures in a limited range of sizes.

  26. Stu Clayton says
    May 6, 2025 at 2:59 pm

    If each side of a square is a fence consisting of 25 hurdles, the perimeter is 100 hurdles.

    Yes, but “allowing 4 sheep per hurdle” would then imply 4 *100 = 400 sheep, not 200.

    And that would be a single large enclosure. The purpose of the hurdles or “folding” is to partition the sheep into small groups, as I understand the article. Maybe it makes more sense in Dorset dialect (“burr”).

  27. Jerry Friedman says
    May 6, 2025 at 3:01 pm

    Oh, right. Maybe they just added the 25 by 25?

    I also want to know when the root crops were harvested. Before the grazing, so the harvesters left the turnip tops on the ground? Or after, when the ground was covered with manure?

  28. Stu Clayton says
    May 6, 2025 at 3:07 pm

    Maybe they just added the 25 by 25?

    That “solves” the math part: (25+25)*4 = 200 ! But what does it all look like ?

    Or after, when the ground was covered with manure?

    That sounds highly unlikely, and would defeat the purpose of manure – to prepare the soil for a new crop. I have nothing against turnips, but I wouldn’t wade through sheep shit for them.

  29. drasvi says
    May 6, 2025 at 3:07 pm

    An interesting (off-topic) example of spontaneous specialisation of a borrowing:

    On avito.ru a guy (a Kyrgyz guy I think) is selling pants.
    The nominal price is 12 roubles because he wants his pants to be high in the search results. The real price is 2290 roubles.
    So he says:

    Цена для охвата – прайс 2290

    He uses the usual Russian цена “price” for the nominal price – I think because the field he filled is named цена.
    He uses prays (English price) for the real price – I think because it is slang.

  30. Stu Clayton says
    May 6, 2025 at 3:14 pm

    I think because the field he filled is named цена.

    A turnip field ? Did he fill it with sheep shit ?

  31. drasvi says
    May 6, 2025 at 7:22 pm

    Filled in. If this works:)

  32. David Marjanović says
    May 6, 2025 at 7:29 pm

    similar to the way that the English word ‘town’ apparently relates to some kind of fence or enclosure

    Not within English AFAIK, but Dutch tuin means “garden”, and German Zaun means “fence”.

    A turnip field ? Did he fill it with sheep shit ?

    With bullshit in the philosophical sense, it seems.

  33. Y says
    May 6, 2025 at 8:49 pm

    The purpose of hurdles is to limit the number of sheep you have to count at one time, so you don’t fall asleep before you finish.

    (Obvious, but necessary.)

  34. Brett says
    May 7, 2025 at 1:31 pm

    That’s why counting sheep are always jumping over a section of fence!

  35. drasvi says
    May 7, 2025 at 6:55 pm

    Children in books for children that I read when I was a child talked about those sheep often. Or if not often, at least the context was that it is a method known to everyone (and working).

    Those sheep kept perplexing me.

    If it were “think of scratching you leg” or “think of brewing tea and pouring it into cups [without counting]” it would simply be something that (and thinking of that) has absolutely nothign to do with sleep. That wouldn’t perplex me that much, that would be silly and nothing more.

    But “counting sheep”? Did you mean “dressing and undressing cassowaries”? “Relocating a transmission tower”?

    (It did not occur to me that for some people counting real sheep is as normal as brewing tea – the method simply has too little to do with Russian culture).

  36. Brett says
    May 7, 2025 at 8:01 pm

    It’s supposed to help you sleep by being dull, taking advantage of the fact that in many sheep-herding traditions, the sheep have numbers painted on them. (I learned that numbering was a real thing from And Now Miguel….)

  37. Y says
    May 7, 2025 at 9:13 pm

    Someone passes through a field, where a shepherd is tending countless sheep, as far as the eye can see in every direction. The visitor asks:
    — “How many sheep do you have here?”
    The shepherd glances around, and quickly says:
    — “239”.
    — “How did you count them so fast?”
    — “Easy. I counted the legs and divided by four.”

  38. David Eddyshaw says
    May 7, 2025 at 9:41 pm

    An age-old method of avoiding the well-documented dangers of probatarithmetical hypnosis.

    It is likely that evolutionary pressures aided this development, as shepherds unable to master the technique were commonly eaten by wolves as they slept.

  39. Jerry Friedman says
    May 7, 2025 at 10:52 pm

    That “solves” the math part: (25+25)*4 = 200 ! But what does it all look like ?

    Still wondering? I pictured a square plot surrounded by a fence of 25 hurdles on each side, with sheep wandering around eating cut-off tops of rutabagas, which they call swedes.

    I wrote: “Or after, when the ground was covered with manure?”

    That sounds highly unlikely, and would defeat the purpose of manure – to prepare the soil for a new crop. I have nothing against turnips, but I wouldn’t wade through sheep shit for them.

    Harvesting turnips isn’t your only source of income for a week or two, I’ll bet. But I’m sure you’re right. I was having trouble imagining leaving the cut-off tops for the sheep, which would probably prefer something alive, but I probably shouldn’t have been having any trouble. And in a chilly, wet English late autumn or winter, the leaves probably stayed nice and fresh.

  40. drasvi says
    May 8, 2025 at 12:41 am

    @Brett, I understood, that “counting” because “tedious”. The two problems are:

    1. I was a small child. I of course counted. To 2000 or to 1000-something.
    You first count to ten, that is cool. You count to hundred. That is cool.
    You understand that counting to million is not a great idea because why not quintillion?
    But you at least once count to thousand.
    And I did that in bed. At night. To keep myself busy because I did not plan to sleep.
    I knew, this activity will, if anything, will wake me up:)

    2. I did not understand why sheep*. Now I understand that for a shepherd that is very natural occupation (and I imagine not very easy when there are many sheep: instead of forming a neat cubic lattice system or something suitable for counting they’re scattered and moving).

    I won’t be surprised if a shepherd actually finds herself sleepy when imagining herself doing this (after having done it a thousand times for real).

    * and how it is different from simple counting: should I say “one sheep, two sheeps” instead of “one two” or should I picture a sheep (arguably same sheep) each time I think a numeral, or should I imagine a group or what.

  41. drasvi says
    May 8, 2025 at 12:48 am

    Ae there prominent shepherd mathematicians?

    (I’m thinking of Safaitic and the associated question of why those shepherds where literate when many modern people from environments more complex than a volcanic desert aren’t)

  42. Stu Clayton says
    May 8, 2025 at 2:26 am

    Ae there prominent shepherd mathematicians?

    Bartholomaeus Hirt. He may not be prominent, but I’m sure his mother loves him.

    Also Helmut Schaefer. And, provided the origin of his name is as I think it is, Henry Sheffer. Definitely prominent.

  43. drasvi says
    May 8, 2025 at 3:27 am

    It is telling that I don’t know Russian surnames with this meaning.

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